Lock up your doors, shutter your windows, and run for the hills, because Fighter Squadron is coming, and this game has more math than you can shake a slide rule at!

Buzzing the hilltop radio station.

Ok, back to reality. What was all that ranting about? Well, if you've ever played A-10 Attack!, A-10 Cuba!, Or Hellcats Over the Pacific, then you're probably familiar with Eric Parker's unique works. Eric and his team at Parsoft have a singular dedication to making fun sims with the most realistic physics possible.

Some readers will remember my mantra "realistic doesn't have to mean complex" - a phrase I like to use over and over again, especially when I hear certain sim developers insist on making their sims feel like arcade games to make them more accessible. This mantra is in no small part due to my experiences with the A-10 series - games whose physics were far ahead of their time, and even today have not really been surpassed.

Fighter Squadron: The Screaming Demons over Europe is coming, and it looks set to redefine how we look at physics modeling. Offering various graphics options, a good (though modest) cross-section of aircraft to fly, flyable bombers, and the ability to play any mission from any side (much like IAF), a mission designer, and even the ability to design your own airplanes from scratch, FS:SDOE is shaping up to be a very unique entry into the recently crowded skies over Berlin. Today, the objective is to take a quick look at the graphics and certain aspects of the physics modeling.

When it comes to graphics, SDOE offers plenty of options. D3D, Glide, OpenGL, software rendering - take your pick. Planes are absolutely gorgeous in their detail (perhaps just a notch below Jane's WW2 Fighters) and the terrain may be somewhat plain looking but is nevertheless rendered with a decidedly "artistic" flair. Also, when it comes to 3D clouds, the current SDOE beta has the Jane's WW2 Fighters demo beat hands down. They look better and are much easier on your framerate, to boot.

What is perhaps most interesting about the graphics in SDOE is their consistency. Simply put, the objects and world you are looking at is >exactly< the same whether you're looking at an external view or sitting in the cockpit.

Huh? What? Let me try again. Say you are looking at the external view of a B-17 and begin to zoom in. As you get a close look at the cockpit, you will see all the cockpit gauges and controls authentically working. If you switched to the internal view, you would see the same thing. The only difference is that in one view, you are looking from the position of the pilot's seat, and in the other from a camera position somewhere in space.

View forward through the B-17's fuselage.

Standing on the bomb bay catwalk looking up into the cockpit.

Looking through the open bomb bay doors.

The beauty of this consistency needs to be seen to be appreciated. If you haven't already looked, take a look at my photos from the Palm Springs Air Museum. In one photo, you are looking aft from the cockpit - plainly visible are the ball turret, spots for the waist gunners, and the catwalk across the bomb bay.

In SDOE, if you were to look at the cockpit from outside at the right angle or open the bomb bay doors you would also see all these details. It's rather like some detailed scale models with working parts, you can open one part or look through another to see more details contained inside. It's simple, not very fancy, but the effect goes a long way to helping you suspend disbelief

Now a lot of sims these days are claiming realistic physics - and yes, there are more games available today with very respectable flight models than at any time in recent memory. However Parsoft is going further than this - much further.

Take Jane's F-15 as an example. While the flight modeling of the F-15 is quite impressive, the illusion shatters on landing (at least in the initial version). Landing was rather arbitrary by comparison to the flight model. A player could take an 80,000lb loaded Eagle and slam it into the runway at some horrendous descent rate yet still arrest the vertical descent safely and instantaneously.

Compare this experience to a similarly botched landing in a B-17 Flying Fortress in Fighter Squadron. I approached the field with gear and flaps down, first bobbling on the verge of a stall, then adding power, but at the last minute I slammed down on the runway hard and in a completely cockeyed manner.

I landed on the right main first, and it's suspension compressed as it tried to compensate for my funky landing, but the left side came down good and hard. The left wheel broke off , leaving me on two gear and grinding a strut. This made the bomber start a hard yaw to the left that I vainly tried to arrest with rudder and tailwheel steering.

No such luck - once the speed dropped below a certain point, the rudder became completely ineffective and the bomber lurched way over to the side, crashing into a split-level set of cargo crates at low speed. The crates hit the left strut, snapping it back at a funny angle and mangling the prop on the number two engine, which began to quietly pout a stream of smoke. When all was said and done, the bomber was actually safe and level, with the left side wing actually propped up on the lower tier of crates!

The instruments are legible from even out here.

Another example - starting a mission for the first time in the P-51 Mustang, I cranked the engine to get ready. In this case I really mean cranked. Just like starting a (longitudinally mounted) engine in a car, the P-51 rocked back and forth from the torque of engine start.

Excited to get into the air, I punched the throttle, and promptly found myself sitting on my nose with a ruined Merlin impacted in terra firma. In my excitement, I had forgotten to release the wheel brakes, and put enough throttle to pull the center of gravity right over the top of the wheels. Thus I ended up resting on the prop cone and the two mains instead of the tailwheel.

Yet another example - this time I'm saving the most interesting for last. Flying in a formation of Lancasters, I man the tailgunner posistion and find myself unable to resist the temptation of shooting at the fellow bombers in my wing. After making a well-placed burst, I damage a wingie's #1 engine. It begins to smoke, then catch fire, and finally the crew feather the engine. I then direct my fire to one of the two vertical stabilizers. After experimenting a bit, one gets completely shredded off the bomber. The Lanc starts to swerve a bit and looks like it's going to lose control, but the intrepid crew manage to hang on and bring it back under control.

Lancaster in deep sheep dip.

Undaunted, I fire at their left wingtip, and blast it to smithereens. The heavy bomber is hurting badly but keeps formation - although it is dropping back now. Finally, I let loose with a continuous burst into the #2 engine. It eventually bursts into flame, but I keep leaning on the trigger, firing twin streams of .50 cal shells into the same spot. Suddenly the main spar gives way completely - the left wing shears off at the #2 engine mount, the engine breaking free and dropping like a flaming bomb.

Mortally wounded, the hulking bomber begins to pirouette in an aerodynamically correct death spiral. The remainders of the left wing - still holding the #1 engine - flop end over end in the airstream, finally also spiralling into the ground. WOW!

What I'm trying to convey here in these three examples is that Parsoft is not limiting their applications of physics to the flight model. Just about everything in the game is a physically modeled entity that serves a certain purpose. The landing gear suspension is modeled, the structural behavior of the aircraft is modeled, the effects of damage to control and lifting surfaces are modeled. Even the pilots are "virtual pilots" using various stick inputs to control their flight - rather than merely tracking along an invisible set of rails. Essentially, it's the kind of stuff that made A-10 Cuba great, but taken to a new level.

You'll notice this attention to detail when you pull a hard turn and see your wings flex under the strain. You'll appreciate it when you can fly a P-38 like the great aces, realistically adjusting power on your engines independently to improve manueverability. You'll REALLY take notice when a giant chunk of debris from the bomber you just shot cleaves off part of your wing - have fun trying to nurse the broken plane home!

Certainly there are many things that may change and/or issues that have not been resolved. This is not meant so much as an evaluation as it is a glimpse into some of the interesting facets that make Fighter Squadron stand out in the thundering herd of World War II sims to come.

This is at high positive G's - how about that metal fatigue, eh?

Nicely "weathered" paint on this Mosquito.

Even the manufacturer's label on the gunsight is relatively legible.

You can switch from wide-angle to "zoom lens" on the fly. Quite handy.

Flaps partially extended.

Flaps fully extended. Note how the flaps slide back on extensions as well as flipping down. Interesting attention to detail.

Look closely and you'll notice that I dinged my right main gear. It still more or less works, but the crew chief is going to have kittens when he sees this!